from the land of the ice and snow ❆

[wolfofmidgard]

Who: Meja, & open
What: A Valkyrie wakes up in the Cape. A tiny storm brews and then, suddenly, vanishes.
Where: The woods, park, and town.
When: Day 103

All at once, the lack of a presence is both painfully overwhelming and difficult to comprehend. It's as though something more important than gravity, yet more difficult to see than the wind, is gone. The disconnect is sudden, and she can't seem to remember falling asleep. Yet here she is, in woods she doesn't recognize with something around her wrist that... is entirely unfamiliar. She doesn't own any electronics; they don't like traveling between Realms. What's more, this one talks. "We hope you enjoy your stay." Meja blinks, fighting for consciousness. She doesn't sleep, why is this difficult? And then, as she staggers to her feet, it comes to her.

She can't feel Yggdrasil anymore.

The source of her second lease on life is missing. How is that even possible? Meja turns to the tree she's leaning on and presses her ear against the trunk. Yes, she can feel this tree. It's healthy (though grumpy — something about a burning incident), but it's not connected to Yggdrasil. Somehow, even waking up in a strange forest, with a technological wristband, is less unnerving than suddenly being away from the entity that holds the Nine Realms together. Is this some sort of pocket realm? Perhaps it's a trick by the Dökkálfar, and she isn't in her right mind to sense Yggdrasil at all.

A rumble interrupts her thoughts, and suddenly she realizes that her confusion and tension have whipped up a tiny storm of sorts, darkening the sky around this part of the woods. Though the droplets on her face make her feel less alienated, she holds up her hand. Small glints of light, making soft noises like distant cries, shine from her gloved hand as she disperses the storm. It clears in a matter of minutes, restoring sunlight to the forest once more.

Muninn is missing as well, she notices. Surely her raven friend would be the most disgruntled at being separated from the World Tree. He would be unable to seek out his brother for their immature little bouts of insults, which she'd come to understand as their way of touching bases.

"Muninn?" she calls, loudly, but only silence greets her. She's still feeling rather groggy, unintentionally strengthening her Norwegian accent. "This isn't funny, dumming... And it's not my new home."

Still without an answer, Meja sighs. She has all of her belongings, at least. Sweeping the hood from her head, she keeps her white cloak unglamoured — for now — and proceeds through the woods. She keeps her weapons sheathed, but also keeps her senses on alert for anything else in the woods. At first, all it gets her is the scuffle of running hares. But as she walks, she slowly makes out a small number of buildings through a large expanse of what seems to be a park. A town?

She takes a deep breath, still comfortably inside of the woods, and runs a gloved hand through her short platinum-blond hair. Time to see where I am. She's more nervous about it than she'd like, but the buildings she can see are of a style that she... hasn't laid eyes on in a long, long time.

On the other hand, she'll learn nothing in the woods. So, slowly, she proceeds forward.

Comments

[wolfofmidgard]

It's been a long time since someone's asked her a question like that. Meja thinks for a long moment, as they walk. "Magic is a life-force of sorts. It's hard to define. I presume it comes from the world itself, perhaps from Yggdrasil. You can do a great many things with it. Set fires, imprison others, freeze water, protect a forest from specific threats — there's very little you can't do with it, once you learn it properly. Though the bigger things get, the more tiring they are on the person who created them."

[purplishgreen]

Interesting. A different explanation, but is that from a different understanding or a different universe's rules? The end result is similar, so perhaps it's not so surprising that they have the same label?

She really doesn't know how these sorts of things work.

"Those are definitely the sort of things I would term impossible, or would have before I came here and witnessed such things for myself," she says.

[wolfofmidgard]

The thought that so many of them come from different places is an intriguing one. It's been a long time since Meja has been somewhere completely new, like the Cape, even if the circumstances are, well... less than terrific.

No magic at all isn't a stretch for her to imagine — before the age of fifteen, she'd never known about its presence and had only read about it in stories.

"So there's no magic at all in your world," she hazards. "What did you do before being, ah, brought here?"

[purplishgreen]

"I am, or perhaps was, a commando. I was disciple and bodyguard to Matriarch Benezia for two hundred years, but, most recently..." Shiala sighs a little. "I've been helping the humans of Zhu's Hope rebuild their colony after the death of the Thorian."

She shuts her eyes. It's home, now, but the course that took her there isn't easy.

"They were infected. I was briefly absorbed by it. We are... linked, now. Or at least, we were before I came here."

[wolfofmidgard]

"I'm sorry to hear it," Meja offers, with a sympathetic smile. She thinks of her own forces, and Eloise, and hopes that they're managing all right in her absence. Hopefully Eloise hasn't started any fights with Lady Ingibjörg — but she's not holding her breath. "Looks like you've gone from one rebuilding project to another."

[purplishgreen]

"So I have," Shiala says, and sighs. "I think I would have preferred to stick with the one I already knew."

She gives Meja a brief, sad little smile. "What of yourself? What are you, in your life?"

[wolfofmidgard]

Here's where she'd like to say oh, I travel or oh, I live on Midgard and do what I can. But no. Shiala's shared so much, it would be rude to clamp down now. Even if her duty makes her feel terribly self-conscious. Still, she can't quite help the sheepish smile that spreads across her face.

Giving an authoritative position to someone made uncomfortable, in life, by authority must have made the universe cackle. Or perhaps just the Norn.

"I'm a general," she explains. "It's my duty to look after and protect Midgard, and any other Realms that require my assistance."

[purplishgreen]

"Oh!" Shiala straightens. "Midgard was... Earth, yes?"

She understands this, as one soldier to another, the value of protection. She's spent her lifetime protecting, and she can respect that in someone else.

"Then it sounds as if you do good work."

[wolfofmidgard]

Meja nods in confirmation. It's not easy work, making sure an entire Realm isn't being abused by another. Especially with magic the way it is.

"I try my best. Earth is a big place, and some of its enemies are very small. But it's been fairly peaceful, up until recently."

[purplishgreen]

Earth doesn't seem like a big place to Shiala -- no bigger than any other planet, really, and... well, cultural bias, Thessia seems far more important to her.

"In my time, Earth had only recently joined the galactic community. A mere thirty years ago, nothing more." She folds her hands behind her back. "What sort of enemies does Earth have other than your own interspecies wars?"

She's honestly curious. Are there other species in this other realm?

[wolfofmidgard]

"We haven't had a true war, among humans, in a few hundred years," the Valkyrie explains, a fact that she's quite grateful of. "Some of the other Realms are peaceable enough — no one ever receives threats from Alfheimr or Vanaheimr. Our biggest problems tend to be the Jotunn, the Giants. They inhabit three different Realms, with three different tribes, and they care nothing for Midgard or the gods."

An argument can be made that the gods deserve it, but really. Why do immortal beings insist on their grudges? Meja makes an effort not to keep them. Save for one being, of course... but all of the Realms would be better off without him skulking behind the scenes.

"The Jotunn are intensely warlike, but disorganized. No tribe but the Frost Giants can decide on a King. That doesn't stop them from causing everyone around them a headache, unfortunately. Then there's the Dökkálfar, the dark elves, who live somewhere under Midgard's surface, but they don't surface all that often. Thankfully. Whenever they do, they cause a significant death toll in a short amount of time. And then, occasionally, there are smaller threats. Pockets from the old days, monsters who have been around for a long time. Kraken, trolls, dragons, kokko, draugr."

[purplishgreen]

To Shiala, it's a lot of words without meaning, and it leaves her with the distinct feeling she has a bugged translator. It also sounds very little like the Earth she's heard of -- only second hand, perhaps, but still she's heard enough to know it isn't much like... this.

"I... haven't heard of any of these species. I get the feeling that the reality you're from is very different from my own."

Magic aside, too.

[wolfofmidgard]

Meja smiles. There's a wry tint to it that has nothing to do with Shiala, and everything to do with humans who tell her those things don't exist. "If you'd like, when I'm more settled in, I can tell you all about them. Or some of them, at least," she adds, because even she doesn't know everything. That would be presumptuous.

"Most humans have no idea that all of that exists. And if I do my job right, that's the way it will continue to be."

Her tone wavers, unhappily, over right. That's the way Lady Ingibjörg wants her to do her job. Meja would be happier letting humans know about all that shares their Realm, so that they can properly defend themselves. Instead, they have to rely on the Valkyrie for protection.

[purplishgreen]

"I would like that," Shiala answers.

On the whole, the idea is troubling -- there are many mysterious things in the galaxy, but... unknowable? No. Only unknown. Still, she's known people to turn a blind eye to things.

"In my experience, it's not a good thing for people to not know of the dangers that threaten them, whether through willful ignorance or the censorship of their superiors."

[wolfofmidgard]

"Funny how, wherever you go, ignorance is still a problem," the Valkyrie chuckles, though part of her wants to sigh. Ignorance is a terrible thing. It's a good thing that at least some positive seems to go with the negative.

Standing in front of the house she's evidently been assigned, Meja eyes it with a frown. Beyond the fortress that all Valkyrie live in, at one point or another, she doesn't have a permanent home. She's not certain if she'll be making much use of it. But, it's good to know that it exists... and perhaps it can offer some clues as to the people who lived here before. Surely others came before them?

"We're not the first people to live here, are we?" she wonders aloud.

[purplishgreen]

"It does seem like that's the case," Shiala says. "There are... belongings in the house, but I don't know anyone who came here with much in the way of luggage."

It has... unfortunate implications. She can't help those people now.

"I don't know who built any of this, other than it looks human to me."

[wolfofmidgard]

Meja nods, her eyes having a faraway look in them. "They look... a little like the buildings where I was born. Less colorful, perhaps. I haven't seen buildings like them in... a long while." That's an understatement, but she shakes her head slightly to bring herself back to the present.

"Thank you for showing me here." She glances around at the other houses. "I'll have to do some wandering of my own, to commit the area to memory."

[purplishgreen]

Shiala bows her head in acknowledgment. "It was very good to meet you, Meja. It's hard to offer a proper welcome here, but you have mine, for what it's with. Take care."